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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Leading Beyond the Bottom Line


Every for-profit or non-profit leader has a bottom line.  It’s why you were hired. What is your bottom line? 
Social change – shareholder value – product innovation – spiritual transformation – profit...

Before you read on, name your organizations' bottom line here:_________

I suggest you add a bottom-line measure to your leadership:  the personal development of the people you lead.  In the long run it isn’t about what you leave behind for your organization ~ it’s about who you leave behind. 

Although our world places great value on leaders who accomplish great things, it’s the leaders who ‘accomplish’ inspiration in the lives of others who endure in our collective memories AND have left a legacy of change in thinking and behaviour that continues to serve the world.

Look at these pictures (or insert the image of a leader you admire) and describe for yourself the legacies of each leader:

  • What was distinctive in their life? 
  • How did they inspire you?
  • To what extent has their leadership endured beyond their organizational ‘bottom line’?
  

Now, here’s a counter-intuitive point:  the clearest path to influencing the character and personal development of others is to pay attention to your own growth!  Developing others isn’t so much about being an inspiring motivator, providing leadership coaches, or implementing a team-development plan (as helpful as they are).  It’s really based in YOU, in the “quality of you” as their leader.  You best lead others by consciously leading yourself.

A leaders’ self-awareness is the basic building block of effective leadership.  

Leaders who lead themselves acknowledge that there are typical stages and phases of development through which all people travel.  Throughout life we will cycle through these phases.  At times they are painful and uncomfortable.  Effective leaders don’t avoid these stages, but rather normalize them as natural building blocks of their inner life and character.  It’s from that inner life that they lead in the most profound ways ‘beyond the bottom line’.

Here’s my broad description of the phases of:  
Questioning/Clearing/Crucible/Clarity

Questioning

At various points throughout life a sense of ‘dis-ease’ with our context settles over us.  I have often observed this in the lives of leaders when I hear them express: “Is this all”?  After a period of years in their role, after the initial building phases of projects, visions or teams and after the job has settled into some kind of pattern, a dis-ease with life and leadership enters their thinking.

This does not mean something is wrong.  It does mean something in you is stirring.  Something is calling you to self-examination and possibly to re-calibration of your place in life, in relationships, in leadership.  This is a good and healthy place – so don’t shake it off by ramping up your work life or hastily exiting your role.

It’s just good to sit in the place of questioning for a while.

Clearing

Our life/heart/soul longs for something deeper to connect with than the typical bottom-line of a leadership role.  We are inherently connected to something more than money, honour, status or achievement.  It’s a sense of destiny or legacy – the deep knowledge that we are on this earth for a purpose and that when our role is done and our life is finished, we have meant something to someone in this world.  I believe it’s the God who created you that put that stirring there.  Whether you believe that or simply that we as humans are meant to contribute something for the benefit of this world, we find our greatest meaning & contribution outside of ourselves.

Yet through our lives we encounter things that get in the way of living a legacy-producing life.  The fog of deadlines, demands & distractions enshroud our life and we are in desperate need of emerging into a clearing.  That is why “The Questioning” is such a critical phase!  It starts a process where you hear the deepest longing of your soul speak back to you.

“The Clearing” is a place (and a process) where you come face to face with yourself.  In this place the most powerful thing you can do is to give a name(s) to the deficits you are discerning:
-in your personal character
-around your unfulfilled aspirations
-about what you lack to be a ‘legacy’ leader 

I urge you to a ruthless honesty about yourself.  It’s not only critical for you, but for the world!   WHY? Our for-profit and non profit leadership positions need character-leaders who see beyond the hard facts of most bottom-lines.  They see impact on people, on the environment, on communities, on culture, on well-being.  This is ‘another way’ of leadership needed by our world.  This way of leadership isn’t acquired through an MBA program.  It comes through honest reflection on the very nature of who you are as a leader. 

Crucible

Chinese symbols for 'Crisis'
Articulating your deficits and aspirations is one thing.  Owning them to the point of making a choice to act is something else.  Crucible creates personal crisis.  Here we come face to face with the limitations of our current self and realize that without change, we will never become who we aspire to be.  The choice is stark:  remain in status quo, coast for the rest of your life and surely wither on the vine, OR get off of your chair and make some commitments to move your life forward.


Ambivalence at this stage is natural, because change is hard.  We become accustomed to our current state of being and so will ask ourselves: “Do I really want to go through the effort of becoming a different/better person”?

This push-pull between our knowledge of a need for change and our disinterest in the energy required to change creates an internal tempest.  What you choose in that storm of self-analysis forms your character development going forward.

Clarity

“Clarity” is defined as ‘the quality of being clearly expressed’.  It comes only to those who act on (express) their choice for change.  Notice I said it comes to those who act.  Clarity is profound when it first comes to your awareness.  But that’s not true clarity.  It’s just awareness.  True clarity is when your choice is ‘expressed’ not only in words, but action.  You need commitment and discipline to act until what you have chosen becomes a regular part of your life and/or thinking.

You have been there before.  Remember those meetings when the team had ‘clarity’ on a direction?  Everyone left the meeting inspired & hopeful.  But there was no commitment to regular and sustained action.  The ‘clarity’ you thought you had died because of lack of expression beyond the words.

It’s simple, but curiously get’s missed too often:   
MAKE A PLAN + EXECUTE A PLAN = ACCOMPLISH REAL CHANGE.

In summary:

...Let the questions come & sit with them for a while.
...When face to face with yourself, be honest about what you are and what you aspire to yet become.
...As hard as it may be, own who you are, and the changes you need to make.
...Express your aspirations by making a plan and executing it.

There is a greater metric than the economic or social ‘bottom-line’.  You run your business or non-profit by it’s’ bottom line, but don’t run your life that way.

Your life will be judged.  What will it say to the world?


Harv Matchullis

If you or your team desire support to turn your aspirations into action, contact me for an initial discussion and sample session on how coaching can ensure you enact the change you know you need

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